This invention relates to a bill acceptance control method and a bill accepting system used in a vending machine or exchanger.
A bill accepting device generally comprises a bill discrimination device which discriminates a true bill from a counterfeit one among deposited bills and accepts the true bill and returns the counterfeit one. In a prior art bill acceptance control, if a deposited bill has been found to be a true bill, the bill accepting device enters a mode in which this bill is immediately accepted. A true bill signal thereupon is supplied to a vending machine or exchanger which uses this bill accepting device for causing the machine to count the number or amount of deposited bills. In this prior art device, however, in a case where, due to mulfunction in a machine utilizing the bill accepting device such as a vending machine or exchanger or mulfunction in a transmission path of a true bill signal, the counting operation is not performed in the machine utilizing the bill accepting device despite the fact that a true bill signal has been generated by the bill accepting device, the deposited bill is received and not returned by the bill accepting device without dispensing of any article or exchanging of money. This inconvenience occurs because the prior art device takes in the bill without confirming whether the true bill signal has been properly used for its purpose or not.